This week opened on Monday with me joining the weekly “One on One'' zoom sessions with Teaching Artist, Chloe Russel and one of MSS’s Illustrators. The session began with the Illustrator proposing to spend time working on a commission she had received, to paint a Yorkie (Yorkshire Terrier). Chloe helped the Illustrator break down all the steps of consideration that needed to take place before beginning the endeavor, such as, how the artist was being paid, how large the piece should be, what reference images to source and the type of media she was going to be using to create the artwork. After the steps were all planned out, the Illustrator began working on cutting a poster board down to a framable size. She decided she was going to draw the Yorkie from the reference image she was provided by the client and then go back and use watercolor paint. Chloe and I guided her during the process on some techniques on how to use her new watercolor cake pan set.
On Thursday, I ran my first planned lesson on “Continuous Line, Blind Contour”, aided with the graceful help of AJ Jarvi-Beamer and accompanied by MCAD Teaching Artist, Coordinator, Aki Shibata as an observer of the lesson. There were only three MSS artists present that day.
The day opened with AJ and I figuring out how I can present my presentation on the lesson over zoom, since I was having some technical difficulties on my end, we decided to have AJ share and I would communicate with her when to go to the next slide.
During the presentation, I explained the concept of Continuous Line, Blind Contour Drawings. I pushed an emphasis on following the guidelines of two rules; 1. Don’t look at your drawing paper, and; 2. Keep your drawing tool in contact with the paper/canvas. I then showed the artists some examples of Architect, Frank Gehry’s continuous line drawings, some examples that included added color by Ian Sklarsky, and a brief two minute, YouTube demo that went in depth on how to practice the blind contour drawing exercise.
After the presentation, AJ and I surveyed the room to see what everyone wanted to draw. AJ printed out a reference image for each artist with their preferred drawing subject for the exercise.
I structured the studio time into two 2 minute drawings and one 30 min drawing. AJ suggested we played music to get everyone in a creative vibe, and put on music that she knew these artists would enjoy.
There were a couple of distractions during the studio time such as bathroom breaks and an orange being on the floor. We added some extra time to accommodate.
At around twenty minutes before the end of class we all shared our drawings that we created. I noticed that these artists struggled with part of the exercise I proposed, where they couldn’t look at their paper while they were drawing. But I was overjoyed that they all implemented a continuous line in their drawings. I should've prepared more responses before the lesson because I was quite repetitive with my feedback. Overall, I was happy that everyone did participate in the activity for the majority of the studio activity and they made some work! I definitely learned a lot from this experience and am excited to implement refined lesson planning in the future with my better grasp of what to expect!